Orange added 65,000 subscribers to IPTV and satellite TV services in France during Q4 2019 to total 7.27 million, making it 226,000 gains for the year. Broadband customers increased by 200,000 year on year to a base of 11.66 million.
German public broadcaster ARD will drop satellite delivery of SD TV channels by January 2021, saving it a pretty penny. In the same breath, ARD announced the addition of a replay TV function to set tops and smart TVs supporting the HbbTV 2.0.1 standard.
French encoding specialist Ateme has teamed up with a video orchestration vendor called Vualto, integrating the Vualto Control Hub technology on Ateme’s flagship Titan Live and Titan Mux encoders. The vendor-agnostic VCH product allows broadcasters and content owners to manage video streaming workflows in one place. Integration with Ateme’s Titan Live API allows for automated live streaming workflows, with the ability to automatically start, stop and configure Titan Live encoder services from the VCH interface.
CDN giant Akamai set a record for peak traffic of 121 Tbps last year, which arrived on December 3, but was soon smashed this week with 140 Tbps being delivered from the Akamai edge platform, according to CEO Tom Leighton. Reporting its latest results this week, Akamai hailed the rise in OTT video and gaming for these huge traffic spikes, claiming that the company’s network traffic is growing faster than internet growth rates as a whole. As a result, revenues from the media and carrier segment rose 8% in Q4 2019 to $353 million.
In a similar vein, broadband users are projected to peak to 250GB of median monthly broadband usage for the first time in 2020, according to a report from broadband technology vendor OpenVault. Average speeds last year increased from 103.1 Mbps to 128.3 Mbps, while average consumption grew 27.3% to 344GB.
French middleware vendor Wyplay blew away its numbers with a 33% increase in turnover last year of €12.2 million ($13.3 million), setting record EBITDA of €3.2 million ($3.5 million) for 2019, triple what it recorded in 2018. Wyplay attributed its growth to professional services on Android TV and RDK (the latter launching in September 2018) enabling it to enter new markets. Wyplay plans to increase investments in RDK this year to create new business opportunities.
AVoD offering Tubi recorded 25 million monthly active users as of December 2019, in the process growing its total view time by 160% to 163 million hours watched. Tubi highlights tremendous uptake in Canada and Australia where total viewing time increased 357% year on year, and this year the ad-supported platform plans to launch in the UK and Mexico.
UK competition watchdog Ofcom has been granted powers to make the internet a safer place and increase confidence in technology. The government initiative apparently aims to provide the certainty that technology businesses need to flourish and innovate. Of course, it doesn’t say how.
In-stadium WiFi traffic from Super Bowl LIV increased 9.9% from the previous year to a record 26.42TB transferred, despite there being 10,000 fewer seats in the Miami-based Hard Rock Stadium than in 2019’s host venue. Extreme Networks provided all the WiFi infrastructure and analytics for the event, reporting that Instagram usage drove the most traffic, while each attendee consumed an average of 595.6MB of data, up 21% annually. We’d love to know how many ticket holders gave up on WiFi and switched to mobile data services.
New T-Mobile has officially been granted clearance to form a large third-placed mobile network operator after a US federal court rejected appeals from state attorneys. The judge contentiously dismissed evidence that a merged T-Mobile and Sprint planned to increase prices. Completion is expected by April 1.
OTT video viewing now accounts for nearly 20% of total TV viewing time in US households, according to Nielsen. Of this time, Netflix makes up 31% of viewing, followed by YouTube (21%), Hulu (12%) and Amazon (8%).
Verizon has established its first production studio and 5G lab in London, where the US giant plans to work with start-ups and businesses to co-create new applications and hardware to rethink what’s possible with 5G.
Every acquisition made during the past decade by Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Facebook and Microsoft is being investigated by the FTC. The five technology behemoths have hoovered up countless smaller companies for under $100 million which are not required to be reported to regulators by law, but the FTC believes could help provide insights into antitrust abuses.
One acquisition which is over a decade old is YouTube, bought by Google back in 2006 for $1.65 billion, and now the video platform reportedly plans to add a new subscription tier akin to Amazon channels. Of course, YouTube Originals proved a flop, so it continues to exploration subscription revenue options to complement the successful and often criticized advertising business.
UK operator Virgin Media became a trendsetter 7 years ago when it embraced Netflix onto its set tops and parent company Liberty Global has just renewed that love affair in a multi-year deal covering 11 million video subscribers across Europe.
Comcast’s Xfinity X1 has added a distribution deal for ad-supported streaming channels from Future Today, which has 6.5 million MAUs growing 500% since 2017.
Hisense’s Android-based smart TV platform Vidaa has added ad-supported OTT service Pluto TV, available from March on all Hisense TVs sold in the US and Latin America.
Semiconductor supplier Skyworks is working with the WiFi Alliance to support WiFi 6E products. The term WiFi 6E was recently coined by the industry body to help consumers identify new devices operating in the unlicensed 6 GHz band.
Troubled broadcaster beIN Sports has launched a free 24/7 streaming channel on the Xumo TV service in the US, joining its line-up of over 190 channels on the free, ad-supported streaming platform.
US radio station SiriusXM will start using technology from SoundCloud to enhance it services, as part of a $75 million investment in the audio recognition platform. SoundCloud and its Houndify AI has already worked closely with Pandora, a subsidiary of SiriusXM, to drive ad sales.
Microsoft’s Project xCloud has arrived on iOS in beta mode via Apple’s TestFlight service, which is the first time a cloud game streaming service has arrived on iPhones and iPads since the exiled OnLive app, according to The Verge.